The Vintage Theatre, with a growing reputation for effectively staging small stories like “The Boys Next Door,” shows unprecedented ambition in taking on “Romeo and Juliet.”
Now, to rein some of that ambition back in.
A lot of good is achieved with this 7-year-old troupe’s first attempt at Shakespeare. It’s especially heartening to see so many new actors of color on stage.
But you’d think director Robert Kramer would be scaling the Bard’s sweeping family feud down to a size appropriate to this 68-seat theater, with its postage stamp of a stage. Instead, he unleashes a green but gung-ho cast of 26 on a massive but unfocused mission that takes far too long to complete.
The experiment begins promisingly, amid a thrilling air of unpredictability. The program — far more so than the production itself — tells us we’re set in the present on the California-Mexico border. The white Capulets and the Mexican Montagues run competing beer empires.
You’ll not get any of that from what happens on stage, but the visceral and brutal fight that follows tells you enough — that this will be a contemporary class and ethnic conflict.
That opening scene is great; it’s raw, violent and plays out more like “West Side Story” than stale Shakespeare. It’s potent to hear snippets of the Montagues’ ravings in raw Spanish.
But many insurmountable shortcomings reveal themselves soon enough. And while loyal audiences will forgive much — tonal inconsistencies, fumbled lines, uneven cadence and sloppy diction, even a collapsing balcony — plays that run nearly 3 1/2 hours make people cranky.
Even the Colorado Shakespeare Festival brought R&J home in just over two hours.
This staging quickly surrenders its initial edge in favor of vaudeville and buffoonery that’s so exaggerated it becomes borderline parody. By the time the principals try to wrestle the dramatic heft of the play back, it’s just too late. The music bleed from the bar next door does not help.
The acting takes wild turns. The priest shifts from wiseacre to insufferable lecturer. The excellent Boni McIntyre is a prize to play Juliet’s sober, complicit nurse, but she can only be so effective at money time after having been made to huzzah all over the stage in her orange high-tops.
As the star-crossed lovers, promising newcomers Lorenzo Sarinano and Carolyn Lohr acquit themselves well enough, but this staging is essentially a learning exercise for much of their support cast — and they have much yet to learn.
They need to slow down, enunciate, convey meaning. Some run through lines so abruptly it’s like they’re acting on a treadmill. Others shout incessantly, never the most effective way of conveying sadness, anger or pain.
Because there’s no nuance or subtlety, when the killing finally starts there is no emotional tether.
Still, the effort is sincere. It’s admirable that Vintage is taking on big, scary challenges. That’s how you grow.
But is this the direction Vintage wants to grow?
John Moore: 303-954-1056 or jmoore@denverpost.com
“Romeo and Juliet” *1/2 (out of four stars)
Tragedy. Presented by Vintage Theatre, 2119 E. 17th Ave. Written by William Shakespeare. Directed by Robert Kramer. Starring Lorenzo Sarinano and Carolyn Lohr. Through May 3. 3 hours, 20 minutes. $17-$22. 7:30 p.m. Fridays- Saturdays, 2:30 p.m. Sundays. Also 7:30 p.m. April 14 ($11). 303-839-1361,
